Corporate executives in both Europe and the U.S. face many of the same challenges and opportunities when it comes to disruption innovation and creating growth strategies that will have significant impact. However, a recent study by Bloomberg found that in 2018, the U.S. dropped out of the top ten most innovative countries. One of the global leaders to study and learn from is Helsinki, Finland. Through their commitment to being a culture of rapid experimentation, the citizens, city and business leaders of Helsinki are committed to collaboration, open innovation and empowering citizens to own and be able to manage their own data. Together, they work toward a common city-wide goal to give every citizen back an hour each day by taking friction out of the system.

By bringing together diverse startups and companies in a highly collaborative, open innovation environment, business and city leaders also have developed Kalasatama, an award-winning smart city platform to introduce and validate new services for citizens to improve their everyday lives.

In this session, Irma, Kimmo and Tomi, business leaders from Helsinki, will discuss first-hand Helsinki’s innovation approaches and models. We had the pleasure of meeting Irma, Kimmo and Tomi last August when we led our 2018 Global Executive Innovation Program in Helsinki and Estonia.
They will present new innovation initiatives, collaborations and solutions that cover a range of industries including healthcare and healthtech, smart city and mobility, information technology, gaming, and IoT for industry. We will also learn how corporate executives abroad are responding to global trends including security of patient data in healthcare, cybersecurity for consumers, mobility and smart city design (e-services for citizens).

Part II of this program will be presented by Tomi Teikko, head of Tieto Empathic Building

Empathic Building: Human-centric design in virtual/augmented reality
Tomi Teikko and his team at Tieto have developed a human-centric digital service that solves everyday problems for end-users, such as employees. It’s called Tieto Empathic Building. While many of today’s smart building solutions focus solely on the building’s performance, Tieto Empathic Building goes even farther by aiming to improve employee performance, well-being and happiness. By automating time-consuming and non-productive tasks of communication and administration, it enables and encourages employees to interact, collaborate, and co-innovate while also helping individuals increase their productivity and efficiency.

Come join us for a discussion with Tomi how Tieto Empathic Building is turning employees’ mornings into the perfect day at the office, and learn more about Tomi’s vision for growing Empathic Building globally.

Helsinki at a Glance:
Continuously at the top of global rankings of innovative cities, Helsinki has strongly invested in open, digital technologies for smart city developments and aims to create the most effective transport services in the world. In addition to its legacy as a global leader in technology and IT expertise, Helsinki also has a reputation internationally as an attractive test environment for startups and corporations alike.

-Health technology is Finland's largest and fastest growing high-tech export.
- Finland has the most advanced digital 5G test network in the world, and it is 2nd behind Silicon Valley for highest concentration of successful app developers in the world
- This Nordic country has only 5.5 million people, the same population as the state of Colorado.
- Following a successful collocated event in Sitges in May 2018, HIMSS and Health 2.0 continue to strengthen their ties and chose Helsinki, one of the most innovative cities worldwide, to host the 2019 conference.